Cooking: ‘Not’ Recipes and ‘Hardly’ Recipes

Action: Get creative in the kitchen and don’t be afraid to add your own personal touches!

It occurred to me recently that I’m responsible for preparing 126 meals a week! Thank goodness I learned to chop fast in my 10 years as a gastro pub chef in the heart of the Dorset (UK) countryside. Gone are the days of tying a chive around a portion of perfectly trimmed french beans though. As a mum of four perpetually hungry kids, it needs to be quick, it needs to be heathy, and it needs to be on the table.

I love to cook. Or at least, I did before the kids came along. They seemed to have killed the joy a little, but it’s gradually starting to come back now I’m starting to teach them the art and science of cooking.

The busyness of motherhood has made me pair back my meals to the absolute essentials to get a healthy meal on the table day after day after day. But it still needs to be delicious. After all, where’s the joy in eating plain pasta with boiled carrots like the kids.

I’m not a recipe person. Recipe’s always seem like such hard work so I never use them. There’s the long list of ingredients to shop for (and have festering in your cupboard long after you’ve used a little bit for a one-off dish). And they always seem so complex; marinating, soaking, chopping and the multiple pans.

What recipe books and cooking shows don’t show you is the absolute basics of quick healthy food. I once remember Nigella Lawson getting slammed in the papers for calling avocado on toast a recipe. But we mums need these ideas.

Talking of Nigella, I hope to help make food fun again. My husband laughs his socks off when I sensually lick cream off my fingers Nigella style (but that’s a story for another day!!)

In this course, you’ll find a great list of ‘not’ recipes and ‘hardly’ recipes that you can whip up in a flash and keeps you full of beautiful nutrients to keep you vibrant and healthy so you can get on and enjoy the rest of your day. Because it’s so packed full of information, the best way to use it is to ‘Mark Complete’ the pages you’ve looked at so you can see at a glance what you have and haven’t covered. Use it like a recipe book – it’s something that you can’t possibly read all at once, but will come back to again and again for years to come.

This course works best if you use it alongside the ideas I shared in the Conquering the Cooking Workshop.